The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863

by Henry Morford

"No, we went to 'em, but not up 'em."

"But you went up the Alps, of course?—everybody goes up the Alps."

"Of course we did!" and the lady really bridled. "Think we would go so far as that and spend so much money, and not go up that there?"

The explosion was impending—there was already a rumbling in the distance, which should have been heeded.

"How did you go up—in what kind of a vessel did you say, madam?"

It is to be presumed that by this time the lady was considerably confused even in the smattering of information from the guide-book, with which she had commenced; and she could not have had any moral doubt remaining that the Alps was a river; for she answered, without one symptom of consciousness in her countenance:

"We went up in a steamboat, and a nasty little thing it was!"

The threatened explosion had arrived. That wagon-load of people laughed, shrieked and roared, bent double and chuckled themselves red in the face, to a degree which was very discreditable to their sense of propriety and very bewildering to the mountain echoes. Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame looked around to see what was the matter, and at that moment it seemed that a dim perception must have crept through her head that she had something to do with the merriment, for she reddened, bridled and grew strangely silent. Halstead Rowan, as she looked around,—not by any means joining in the laugh, had suddenly discovered that his legs were cramped from riding, sprung over the side of the wagon and disappeared behind a bend of the road, to make the rest of the short distance to the Flume House on foot.

A mile further, after this novel lesson in geography had been taken, and the wagons drew up at the door of the Flume House, once a great caravanserai that rivalled any other in the mountains, then a mere unoccupied pendant of the all-absorbing Profile which has literally swallowed it. It stands at the lower end of the Franconia Notch proper, and the mountains fall away below it southward, so much that the feeling of oppressive isolation at the Profile is here lost entirely. But there is one charm connected with the Flume House, that can never be forgotten by those who have once stood there and looked eastward; and the merry occupants of the before-deserted piazza, that day, were not likely to be allowed to ride away without having that charm called to their attention, to be remembered ever after as one of those marvels with which Nature confounds Art and defies calculation.

Full before them, as they looked, loomed up the peak of Mount Liberty, so called, as is supposed, because the curve of the crown northward has some indefinite resemblance to the Phrygian liberty-cap of the French revolution. But a sadder and more solemn resemblance was there, needing to be pointed out at first, but asserting itself as a strange reality thenceforward, in presence or in absence. It was with a thrill of awe that the riders, as so many had done before them and as some of them had done long before, recognized the form of the Dead Washington, stretched out on the summit of the eternal mountains that seemed almost mighty and enduring enough for their awful burthen. There seemed a little obscurity in the mouth and lips, as if the shrouding pall partially covered them; but the contour of the massive nose was perfect, as the rugged peak stood relieved against the eastern sky, and above it the godlike forehead swept up southward and fell away again in the very curve of the hair drawn backward as it would be when lying in the calm repose of death. Northward the long round of Mount Liberty marked the full breast, sinking at the recumbent hip and rising again at the bend of the massive knee; while still farther away and in the exact line of symmetry, one of the peaks of the Haystack group shot up and fell suddenly on the other side, as the drapery would do over the stiffened feet. Then the resemblance was complete, unmistakable, almost fearful; and those who looked with reverent eyes realized that the Eternal Hand, thousands of years ago and in a mood that would write prophecy on the very face of the earth instead of recording it on tables of stone, had throned on the tops of the northern mountains an enduring likeness of that man yet unborn, whose glory was to gild every peak and fill every valley with the brightest and purest light of heroism.